Figures showing the true cost of rebuilding houses built with defective blocks that “crumble like Weetabix” could end the “torture” for thousands of homeowners hit by the Mica building scandal in Ireland, campaigners have said.
They have given a cautious welcome to a government-commissioned report that they say more accurately reflects rebuilding costs. If adopted by the government as expected, it would significantly increase the €2.2bn (£1.8bn) compensation scheme unveiled last December.
The housing minister ordered the independent report after his initial offer was heavily criticised because of the shortfall it would leave homeowners.
“All we did was ask them to come up with a fair number,” said Paddy Diver, a campaigner, who claimed that behind closed doors Ireland’s housing minister, Darragh O’Brien, had accepted the old scheme would be abandoned.
“It’s not brilliant, the figures are right, but they are definitely workable for families,” Diver said. “The minister seems to be doing the right thing for the people here despite opposition from inside government. He is getting a lot of heat, but we just hope he is a man of his word and accepts the new figures. He has said he would so we expect that.”
The initial scheme offered a sliding scale of compensation with €145 a sq ft for the first 1,000 sq ft (93 sq metres) and a lower amount for anything above that.
The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland (SCSI) has now submitted straight rebuild costs after looking at eight types of homes hit by the scandal. It concluded that costs would range from €150,000 for a two-bedroom estate house to €421,000 for a five-bedroom, two-storey rural home.
But it warned in its report submitted to the government on Thursday that the costs did not include storage, septic tanks, boundary walls and fences or any outbuildings.
An estimated 7,500 homes, mostly in Donegal and Mayo, have been identified as being affected in the mica scandal, in which walls inside and out of new-build homes have been found to crumble to the touch.
Last year Angela Ruddy, the acting deputy principal of a school in Cardonagh, on the Inishowen peninsula in Donegal, said she was “absolutely disgusted” with the scheme unveiled in December, which she said would leave her with a bill €79,000.
